Kingdom Tower, the world’s tallest building

Kingdom Tower will be built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and measure at about 3,280 feet (1,100 metros), at least 548 feet taller than the Burj Khalifa.

Originally believed to cost $30 billion for the tower alone, the Kingdom Tower will actually cost about $1.2 billion and $20 billion to build out the surrounding “Kingdom City” real estate.

On its design, Adrian Smith stated in an official AS+GG press release:

“This tower symbolizes the Kingdom as an important global business and cultural leader, and demonstrates the strength and creative vision of its people. It represents new growth and high-performance technology fused into one powerful iconic form. ”

“With its slender, subtly asymmetrical massing, the tower evokes a bundle of leaves shooting up from the ground–a burst of new life that heralds more growth all around it.”

I suppose “bundle of leaves” is a slight improvement over the Burj Khalifa’s “stacks of Pringles cans” design.

We already know that an elevator ride from the ground to the top takes about 12-minutes, but we didn’t know that the entire structure would include 59 elevators with five of those being double-deck elevators.